PicoBlog

Farsang Journal: Being language students we’ve always been a bit dismayed at how languages are taught in this country, and when we came across Language Transfer we thought: ‘Shit, what have we been doing for the past four years?!’ Since then, we’ve always been really keen to speak to you and learn more about you and your method. 

‍To start with, were you always interested in languages growing up? Tell us a bit about your background. 

‍Mihalis Eleftheriou: I grew up in East London, and so I was always surrounded by different languages - I found this fascinating, almost magical! Just how people could switch between languages. 

‍FJ: What was your native language growing up? 

‍ME: I like how you said was, because it really has been like that. I grew up just speaking English, and now I’m an amazing foreign speaker of English, apparently! 

‍FJ: When you create one of your language courses and apply your ‘thinking method’ to that language, do you finish the course able to speak that language to a good level? 

‍ME: I mean it’s largely for teaching purposes, but it depends on practice really. I think it’s clear that what the courses give you is a basis to transfer your thoughts to a second language. It could just be something that floats around in your head and makes a particular world a bit more relevant, or could could go all-out and get some kind of native fluency. My job is not to push people through an exam for an example like your professors - and you know just as I know, that most people will graduate from a language degree not able to speak a single word of that language! I know this because I did a language degree - This is sad. Of course anyone can achieve fluency but you have to insist and have it as your goal - but this is not my job. Fluency is about life, getting out there and using the language. For me, it is part of this culture of sterilising experience: learning in a closed, safe space. No! You have to go out in the world and try it. This is how you’re going to learn anything. 

‍FJ: We’re very interested in open access education and similar projects, too - do you see the Language Transfer as part of a bigger political mission? Is this informed by certain goals or a certain ethos? 

‍ME: As I’ve said before, it’s mainly that I don’t agree with the monetary system as an artificial decision making mechanism. It doesn’t mean I’m necessarily against money, it just means that in the system in which we live, what makes decisions is what moves money. If something moves money, it will happen - if it doesn’t, it won’t. It’s beyond any ideological posture, it doesn’t matter how morally correct or bankrupt you are, it doesn’t matter. With language transfer I’m making a stand against that; I’m making a stand against what we’re taught about our identities. We grow up believing we’re something that we’re not - some kind of homogenous ‘English’ identity. It’s ridiculous that we still have ideas that suggest that one identity must mean it applies to all types of people who claim that identity, to the point that it pushes people to be racist. When I was making my courses in Cyprus I realised that we were taught that we were Greek and Turkish Cypriots and we had to fight over the island - but this is another lie. We’ve always been Cypriots and we’ve always spoken many different languages, more often than not, people even just changed religions to pay less tax! Language helped me realise that the norm is not necessarily the truth. 

‍FJ: Were you inspired by any particular initiatives of open, free education throughout history? 

‍ME: I’m inspired by my contemporaries - by people who are suffering in this world, and find it stupid and ridiculous that we’re taught that we live in a civilisation that cares for us. I wouldn’t mind it if we were just more open about how violent the system we live in really is. Lots of people that have this inquietud, this lack of stillness, have inspired me - to make it free etc. The Zeitgeist films also put into words many things that I felt were wrong with the economy and politics. Most of my inspiration, however, comes from myself - from isolation, from my own internal world. The more I want to involve people in Language transfer the more I realise that I’ve never seen such a low work ethic as I’ve seen among this younger generation. When I was your age and I was looking to work in an NGO, if I saw an organisation like language transfer offering me volunteer work (and paying me!), I would’ve broken my back so happily to do that! Now that I’m offering this, I see people who want to identify with someone like me, but not actually do any of the work associated with it. It’s just identity politics - until you do something, that’s not who you are, no matter how much you identify with it. It’s a difficult time for us all, particularly with this identity politics. People aren’t really sure who they are and what they’re doing here. All of this does make LT quite difficult to manage. 

‍FJ: Has it ever come to a point where you’ve considered monetising LT?

‍ME: I think it’s fucked up that people don’t understand money doesn’t get me excited! Genuinely. I’m not pretending to be some kind of lofty, spiritually developed figure. How do people not understand that loving, sharing, and experiencing things is what makes life worth living? Of course, money is really important when you can’t eat or afford the rent. But beyond that, what is it? For me, keeping LT free is part of the message. 

‍FJ: But what was your starting point? What was the spark that made you create what is essentially a regimented curriculum for language learning? 

‍ME: I was teaching English to pay for my musical education, and then I realised that the course I was teaching at the time was amazing! I hated every recording and editing I had to do - I enjoyed everything else. I realised that I needed to record the course I was teaching at the time. What was amazing for me with English was reframing the way you teach questions and negations. Usually you just learn the ways you ask questions in English by rote: do you? Can you? Etc etc. I reframed it all starting with the word ‘do’, as an emphatic element. I do want. I do go. And building the rest from there, which made it all come together. I thought it was too cool to let it go into oblivion! Then I went to Cyprus, and with the entire Greek-Turkish thing, I just thought, oh God, language again… [laughs]. This kept happening until I lost myself in LT. My brain works in such a way that I don’t exist unless I finish something - I don’t cook, clean, all my energy had to go into it. I was just on this mountain doing this until I had a breakdown and realised I couldn’t do it anymore, which is when I made the video in which I asked for some help. Then people started throwing money at me! And here I am, still doing it. But I’m much more relaxed, trying to understand my own brain and how it works. 

‍FJ: You said Spanish was therapeutic for you. Have any languages after that had a similar role? Do you have a particular affinity with a certain language? Not as a value judgement on the language but just as a personal experience. 

‍ME: Spanish was amazing for me because it was the first language I came across - I was speaking it and I had no idea where it was coming from. Something very strange happened to me with Spanish - I remember when I was your age my mum had a Spanish friend, and she wanted me to meet her. I just remember this woman going, ‘but your son is Spanish! I don’t understand! Your son is Spanish!’ It was just exhilarating because it made me feel like someone. Whereas for trauma reasons, I’d never really felt like anyone. This was all stuff I never really understood. Spanish was huge for me - but then, when I moved to Argentina and my time there was done, I dissociated again. I went to Cyprus, and my family is from there - this maybe was a dissociation-reassociation. It was particularly strong because it was there even before Argentina entered my life! I then really identified with Greek, Arabic and Turkish and the languages I was exposed to there. I never used just one language because of my activism between different communities, I never had the same thing that happened to me with Spanish. Now, Spanish and English for me are totally on a par. When I went to Argentina and decided to start from scratch, I never thought that what happened would happen. I became a complete other person, and I would go ages and ages without ever speaking in English

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Interview cuts out…

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In Argentina, I felt that I was finally a person of my own creation. I got a perfect accent, and after a while, no one realised that I wasn’t from there and I really enjoyed that. But after a while when I went to Cyprus, and then back to Argentina, I carried some of that with me. I was no longer a ‘native’ Argentine, but then I realised that people don’t accept you in the same way and you become a kind of second class citizen in a way. But that’s the price you pay for being international. In Argentina for example they can talk about ‘oh you’re European, so you must think xyz’. I think the only reason I perfected my accent was to avoid any bullshit! For them, you’re born in the UK, you’ve grown up in the UK - you’re privileged. But of course we know how ridiculous this is. 

‍FJ: But don’t Argentines then have this claim of being the most ‘European’ of the other Latin American nations?! 

‍ME: There is such a big identity crisis going on there. I think that’s why God made me start in Argentina! They always talk about how others see Argentina, how others compare to Argentina - no one cares! We need to get over this idea of being 100% of our culture. We need to be able to say: I take this because I like it, and I leave this because I don’t. We need to be less victims, and be agents of our culture rather than just reproducing what we’ve come across. 

‍FJ: You’ve mentioned your musical education and you’ve now uploaded your Music Theory course. How has it been applying your thinking method to music? 

‍ME: This course has been thought about for eight years. This image came up on Facebook, and this crazy autistic drawing of frequencies, circles, squares and triangles with the caption ‘I think I’ve had too much coffee’! [laughs]. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I think it’s shaping up to be my best work yet. I don’t use the word proud very often, but I really am proud of this course. 

‍FJ: Who is the course for? Is it for practicing musicians? 

‍ME: It’s for anybody. It’s for anybody who wants to understand music; it’s for musicians who want to understand music (because Musicians don’t understand music consciously in the same way that native speakers don’t understand their language consciously); and it’s also for anyone questioning the very strange reality that we live in. Anyone who has any doubts about their existence - this is the course to listen to. The intro track asks the questions: what is music? What is consciousness? And I’m telling you, I’m as confused by it as you are! 

‍FJ: Do you view the language transfer method as being diametrically opposed to traditional language teaching? 

‍ME: At the end of the day, what is traditional language teaching? Traditional language teaching is teaching which hasn't been subject to a huge amount of thought. So essentially, if you’re doing that, language transfer provides the thought that you don’t get. So just like you guys who do both, when you go into class after having listened to the LT, everything you learn is suddenly 5 or 10 times more valuable! 

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